“I wouldn't have said this at the time, but looking back, it was all about his accent. It really made up for what he lacked in the looks department,” says Maya, a 29-year-old yoga instructor from Boston, recalling how she fell for Steve, her foreign-born ex-fiancé. “If he’d spoken like a Midwesterner, all bets would have been off.”

It’s funny how, for some women, an exotic accent can boost a man’s sex appeal. But what is it about the sound of a foreign voice that’s so captivating? London native Rochelle Peachy, who still speaks with an accent despite living in the U.S. for 12 years, may not know the exact answer but she does know that for some people, it's the ultimate spark. In fact, after years of people asking her to set them up with her international friends, she finally launched a dating website, ILoveYourAccent.com, in February. The site was specifically created to help singles in the United States and the United Kingdom connect – and, as she explains, one of the main reasons it works is that each country seems to be in love with the others’ accent.

“Funnily enough, Brits love the way Americans speak, as well,” says Peachy, “though it’s not so wildly known. We hear it in the movies.”

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But sex appeal isn’t limited to just the Brits. Plenty of other accents have been known to do the trick, too, as Amy, a photographer from Bethesda, MD, explains.

“I moved to France for awhile, and lived with a Frenchman,” she says. “Philippe and I were together for about two years, and he said plenty of wonderful things to me in his native language, but what I found most charming (and deadly!) was when he'd translate French sayings into English. Once, I had to return to the States for a month or two and he was very down about it. The day he drove me to the airport it was raining, and at one point, speaking in English with his beautiful Gallic accent, he quietly said, ‘See, even the sky is crying because you're leaving!’ It nearly killed me! Of course, if an American guy said anything like that to me, I'd probably laugh out loud. But French sayings tend to be more poetic than ours to begin with – even if the point is basically the same– and when someone translates them into English, especially with that wonderful accent…well, they still get me every time!”

“Guys with accents just seem so cultured – the very sound of their voice suggests a maturity and worldliness that most men here don't have,” adds Amy. “It's definitely a huge turn-on!”